Page 110 of Dick Stone, Regency Stud
“Tabby, are you using my trainingagainst me?” he asked with a hiss. He’d taught her how to be modest in her speech so she could play a lady convincingly — and liberate ever higher sums from her patrons. That she would use it against him was unthinkable! Unconscionable! And entirely possible.
“I wouldn’t want the family running the inn to think ill of us,” she said, her eyes fixed to the rug on the floor. Why, she was playing with him, the minx!
Edward shot from his chair, ready to spank her little arse most pleasurably and then rut between her thighs until they both erupted, when the innkeeper’s daughter bustled in with their meal.
“I’ve a good stew for you here,” she said, laying everything on the table and pulling out the chairs. “Mind you ring if you need more bread. I’ve an ale for his lordship and some half-beer for the lady.”
“Do you have a good pump?” asked Tabby. “It’s just that I rather prefer water.”
Edward had to hold in a laugh as the girl looked at this ostensibly fashionable lady and struggled to make sense of the request. Tabby maintained perfect composure while requesting what she truly wanted, strange though it was, and he couldn’t help but feel amazed at her. She’d been born so far below him, but had no problem demanding what was hers.
What else might she want? He had an ache as he realized that the answer might not be him. At least not in a permanent way. She might take up with any number of fine men and get lost in the whirlwind of life in the capital, only to lose sight of him.
Why, she might prove as faithless as Lady Philadelphia De Courcy, now Duchess of Chevaliermont, who had been engaged to Edward — and celebrating their engagement ball when he’d discovered her now-husband balls deep in the chit.
Edward dropped into his chair and grabbed the well-formed spoon the lass had left for his stew.
“We should eat,” he said grumpily, digging into the meal.
Tabby sat like a little lady, only enraging him further. For whose benefit would she move with such grace in the future? Certainly not his! He was of half a mind to drag her to some shadowy corner and take her against a wall like one of the Covent Garden girls she’d no doubt seen on her walks about the city. Remind her she could put on all the airs she wanted, but she was still his girl. Young woman.
“Mmm,” moaned Tabby in the way she always had while tucking into a meal. And then she had the temerity to lick her spoon most sensually and wink at him!
“Tabitha, I am three seconds from—”
“And here’s your water, your ladyship,” said the innkeeper’s daughter, bustling in with a glass and pitcher.
“Thank you,” said Tabby, her eyes down and a real blush dusted across her cheeks. Neither Edward nor Tabby moved to correct the lass. She probably thought they were a married couple, making their way to a country estate to take up genteel farming and begin the production of a good number of children.
Edward’s spoon clattered on the table.
“What is it?” asked Tabby, rushing from her chair to grab him. “Is it an apoplexy? I’ve heard that happens to old men.” She rubbed his arms and placed a hand on his brow.
“Old men.”
“Yes, well, not precisely old, but if a man starts to…”
Something must have shown on his face because Tabby returned to her chair and began studiously eating her stew, this time at a pace reminiscent of Tobias.
“What’syourpunishment if you drop silverware?” she eventually asked.
“Pardon me?”
“I recall you taking me over a chair when I dropped a pretend fork,” she said. “What should happen to you now that you’ve dropped a real spoon?”
Edward held in a gasp. This little strumpet was going to send him through the roof with her antics! First, she had the audacity to play a perfect lady, and now she was deliberately making him remember that afternoon when he’d brought her to the point of paroxysm over and over while denying her release. His cods were so heavy and pained they might as well be twisted inside his smalls.
“Tabitha…” he started, then realized he was missing an important piece of information. “Tabby, what’s your surname?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“Your family’s name.”
“Brewer,” she said without delay. “Though it might have only become Brewer after the flood what killed me mum.”
“Why would a flood change your surname?” he asked, entirely bewildered.
“Folks said my family swallowed more beer than a brewer, and it stuck. There was a flood of beer. Happened, oh, six or seven years ago? A vat of porter took out a bunch of my family what was gathered for a cousin’s funeral,” she said, her old accent and vocabulary coming back in places as she recalled.
